1. I think we disagree on the empirical facts here. EA seems to me unusually open to considering rational arguments for unfashionable positions. People in my experience lose points for bad arguments, not for weird conclusions. I’d be very perplexed if someone were not willing to discuss whether or not utilitarianism is false (or whether remote working is bad etc) in front of EAs, and would think someone was overcome by irrational fear if they declined to do so. Michael Plant believes one of the allegedly taboo opinions here (mental health should be a priority) and is currently on a speaking tour of EA events across the Far East.
2. This is a good point and updates me towards the usefulness of the survey, but I wonder whether there is a better way to achieve this that doesn’t carry such clear reputational risks for EA.
3. The issue is not whether my colleagues have sufficient public accessible reason to believe that EA is full of good people acting in good faith (which they do), but whether this survey weighs heavily or not in the evidence that they will actually consider. i.e. this might lead them not to consider the rest of the evidence that EA is mostly full of good people working in good faith. I think there is a serious risk of that.
4. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I’m not saying that EA should embrace political level self-restraint. What I am saying is that there are sometimes reasons to self-censor holding forth on all of your opinions in public when you represent a community of people trying to achieve something important. The respondents to this poll implicitly agree with that given that they want to remain anonymous. For some of these statements, the reputational risk of airing them anonymously does not transfer from them to the EA movement as a whole. For other statements, the reputational risk does transfer from them to the community as a whole.
Do you think anyone in the community should ever self-censor for the sake of the reputation of the movement? Do you think scientists should ever self-censor their views?
“People in my experience lose points for bad arguments, not for weird conclusions.”
I just want to note that in my experience this only happens if you’re challenging something that’s mainstream in EA. If I tell an EA “I’m a utilitarian,” that’s fine. If I say, “I’m not a utilitarian,” I need to provide arguments for why. That’s scary, because I’ve never studied philosophy, and I’m often being stared down by a room full of people with philosophy degrees.
So basically, some of us are not smart enough to make good arguments for everything we believe—and we’ll only lose social points for that if we mention that we have weird beliefs.
I might have more to say later. On (1), I want to state that, to me, my position seems like the conservative one. If certain views are being politically silenced, my sense is that it’s good for people to have the opportunity to state that. In the alternative, people are only allowed to do this if you already believe that they’re subject to unfair political pressure. Looking over the list and thinking “Hm, about 100 people say they feel silenced or that their opinions feel taboo, but I think they’re wrong about being silenced (or else I think that their opinions should be taboo!), so they shouldn’t have this outlet to say that” seems like a strong case for a potential correlated failure. Like, I don’t fully trust my own personal sense of which of the listed positions actually is and isn’t taboo in this way, and would feel quite bad dictating who was allowed to anonymously say they felt politically pressured based on who I believed was being politically pressured.
There are two issues here. The less important one is - (1) are people’s beliefs that many of these opinions are taboo rational? I think not, and have discussed the reasons why above.
The more important one is (2) - this poll is a blunt instrument that encourages people to enter offensive opinions that threaten the reputation of the movement. If there were a way to do this with those opinions laundered out, then I wouldn’t have a problem.
This has been done in a very careless way without due thought to the very obvious risks
If there were a way to do this with those opinions laundered out, then I wouldn’t have a problem.
I interpret [1] you here as saying “if you press the button of ‘make people search for all their offensive and socially disapproved beliefs, and collect the responses in a single place’ you will inevitably have a bad time. There are complex reasons lots of beliefs have evolved to be socially punished, and tearing down those fences might be really terrible. Even worse, there are externalities such that one person saying something crazy is going to negatively effect *everyone* in the community, and one must be very careful when setting up systems that create such externalities. Importantly though, these costs aren’t intrinsically tied up with the benefits of this poll—you *can* have good ways of dispelling bubbles and encouraging important whistle-blowing, without opening a Pandora’s box of reputational hazards.”
1) Curious if this seems right to you?
2) More importantly, I’m curious about what concrete versions of this you would be fine with, or support?
Someone suggested:
a version with Forum users with >100 karma
Would that address your concerns? Is there anything else that would?
[1] This is to a large extent: “the most plausible version of something similar to what you’re saying, that I understand from my own position”, rather than than “something I’m very confident you actually belief”.
Hi Ben,
Thanks for this, this is useful (upvoted)
1. I think we disagree on the empirical facts here. EA seems to me unusually open to considering rational arguments for unfashionable positions. People in my experience lose points for bad arguments, not for weird conclusions. I’d be very perplexed if someone were not willing to discuss whether or not utilitarianism is false (or whether remote working is bad etc) in front of EAs, and would think someone was overcome by irrational fear if they declined to do so. Michael Plant believes one of the allegedly taboo opinions here (mental health should be a priority) and is currently on a speaking tour of EA events across the Far East.
2. This is a good point and updates me towards the usefulness of the survey, but I wonder whether there is a better way to achieve this that doesn’t carry such clear reputational risks for EA.
3. The issue is not whether my colleagues have sufficient public accessible reason to believe that EA is full of good people acting in good faith (which they do), but whether this survey weighs heavily or not in the evidence that they will actually consider. i.e. this might lead them not to consider the rest of the evidence that EA is mostly full of good people working in good faith. I think there is a serious risk of that.
4. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I’m not saying that EA should embrace political level self-restraint. What I am saying is that there are sometimes reasons to self-censor holding forth on all of your opinions in public when you represent a community of people trying to achieve something important. The respondents to this poll implicitly agree with that given that they want to remain anonymous. For some of these statements, the reputational risk of airing them anonymously does not transfer from them to the EA movement as a whole. For other statements, the reputational risk does transfer from them to the community as a whole.
Do you think anyone in the community should ever self-censor for the sake of the reputation of the movement? Do you think scientists should ever self-censor their views?
“People in my experience lose points for bad arguments, not for weird conclusions.”
I just want to note that in my experience this only happens if you’re challenging something that’s mainstream in EA. If I tell an EA “I’m a utilitarian,” that’s fine. If I say, “I’m not a utilitarian,” I need to provide arguments for why. That’s scary, because I’ve never studied philosophy, and I’m often being stared down by a room full of people with philosophy degrees.
So basically, some of us are not smart enough to make good arguments for everything we believe—and we’ll only lose social points for that if we mention that we have weird beliefs.
I might have more to say later. On (1), I want to state that, to me, my position seems like the conservative one. If certain views are being politically silenced, my sense is that it’s good for people to have the opportunity to state that. In the alternative, people are only allowed to do this if you already believe that they’re subject to unfair political pressure. Looking over the list and thinking “Hm, about 100 people say they feel silenced or that their opinions feel taboo, but I think they’re wrong about being silenced (or else I think that their opinions should be taboo!), so they shouldn’t have this outlet to say that” seems like a strong case for a potential correlated failure. Like, I don’t fully trust my own personal sense of which of the listed positions actually is and isn’t taboo in this way, and would feel quite bad dictating who was allowed to anonymously say they felt politically pressured based on who I believed was being politically pressured.
There are two issues here. The less important one is - (1) are people’s beliefs that many of these opinions are taboo rational? I think not, and have discussed the reasons why above.
The more important one is (2) - this poll is a blunt instrument that encourages people to enter offensive opinions that threaten the reputation of the movement. If there were a way to do this with those opinions laundered out, then I wouldn’t have a problem.
This has been done in a very careless way without due thought to the very obvious risks
I interpret [1] you here as saying “if you press the button of ‘make people search for all their offensive and socially disapproved beliefs, and collect the responses in a single place’ you will inevitably have a bad time. There are complex reasons lots of beliefs have evolved to be socially punished, and tearing down those fences might be really terrible. Even worse, there are externalities such that one person saying something crazy is going to negatively effect *everyone* in the community, and one must be very careful when setting up systems that create such externalities. Importantly though, these costs aren’t intrinsically tied up with the benefits of this poll—you *can* have good ways of dispelling bubbles and encouraging important whistle-blowing, without opening a Pandora’s box of reputational hazards.”
1) Curious if this seems right to you?
2) More importantly, I’m curious about what concrete versions of this you would be fine with, or support?
Someone suggested:
Would that address your concerns? Is there anything else that would?
[1] This is to a large extent: “the most plausible version of something similar to what you’re saying, that I understand from my own position”, rather than than “something I’m very confident you actually belief”.